In 2003 I began work on a research project that has taken me to places that I never imagined: the cultural heritage of space exploration. Now I am determined to bring to light the secrets at the heart of the Space Age.

How will people feel if they look at
the Moon in the night sky, and know that is being mined underneath their eyes? While
diverse publics have been tolerant of scientific missions, commercial ventures
may be received very differently. Mining and exploration will have impacts on
the lunar environment much greater than the low level created by robotic and
scientific missions to date.

While it is probably broadly true to
say “humanity as a whole has
embraced the historic events and objects associated with space research as part
of our jointly held heritage” (Walsh 2012:234), this obscures deeply entrenched
divisions between colonial/spacefaring nations and colonised/'developing' nations
(Gorman 2005a, Gorman 2009b, Redfield 2005). These divisions have been very evident
in the politics around the formation of the Outer Space Treaty (OST), the Moon Agreement even more
so, and contribute to the impasse that resource utilisation on the Moon is
currently facing (Hoffstadt 1994).

The reaction of, say, an Australian to
a US-based profit-making mine in which they have no say or share could easily
be negative. A First Nations Australian may have another layer of reaction,
based on their experience of alienation from country and destruction of
cultural heritage arising from terrestrial resource exploitation. Moreover, an
assault on the integrity of a celestial body which belongs to what is commonly
called the ‘Dreaming’ – a suite of cultural knowledge in which the past is
simultaneously entwined with the creation of law, identity and land in the present
– may be a matter of some concern. Aboriginal people are by no means the only First
Nation to have such a relationship with the Moon.

What is considered to be for ‘the
benefit and in the interests of all countries’ (OST Article 1, see also Moon Agreement
Article 4) depends very much on how regulation unfolds in this next critical
period. Again a parallel with terrestrial mining industry may be instructive.
Management strategies in SLO frameworks include the concept of ‘offsets’: compensating
for impacts at one location through activities at another, either directly or
indirectly. A direct offset might be setting aside a protected area of land to
compensate for the loss of that impacted by mining. Increasing the value of a
heritage place could be considered a direct offset – for example, committing
resources to conserving Tranquility Base to compensate for ‘sacrificing’ a
Lunar Orbiter impact site. Indirect offsets may include funding research or
education around the environmental/heritage resource that will lead to benefits
for it. Note though, that offsets are determined during the planning phase, not
in retrospect ie they do not compensate for damage already caused.

Lunar mining will take place in
an environment where social media are a major part of public engagement with space. Space agencies, private companies, astronauts, missions, and rovers have
their own Twitter accounts and there is an expectation of public involvement.
Crowd-funded space missions such as Lunar Mission One, a probe designed to
drill a deep core in polar regions, is possibly the vanguard of more such
projects. The investors in off-world mining companies are likely to be the same
people who buy shares in terrestrial mining. The moon’s seeming remoteness will
not protect industrial operations from the scrutiny of the public.

References

Bice, Sarah
2014 What Gives You a Social Licence? An Exploration of
the Social Licence to Operate in the Australian Mining Industry.Resources 3:62-80